15 Facts About Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist.

Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson.

Dennis Ritchie's father was Alistair E Ritchie, a longtime Bell Labs scientist and co-author of The Design of Switching Circuits on switching circuit theory.

Dennis Ritchie graduated from Harvard University with degrees in physics and applied mathematics in 1963.

In 1967, Dennis Ritchie began working at the Bell Labs Computing Science Research Center.

Dennis Ritchie relates that, after discussions with the National Security Agency, the authors decided not to publish it, as they were told that the principle applied to machines still in use by foreign governments.

Dennis Ritchie was involved with the development of the operating systems Plan 9 and Inferno, and the programming language Limbo.

Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language and was one of the developers of the Unix operating system.

Dennis Ritchie worked together with Ken Thompson, who is credited with writing the original version of Unix; one of Dennis Ritchie's contributions to Unix was its porting to different machines and platforms.

Dennis Ritchie's Turing Award lecture was titled "Reflections on Software Research".

Dennis Ritchie was found dead on October 12,2011, at the age of 70 at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, where he lived alone.

Dennis Ritchie had been in frail health for several years following treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease.

News of Dennis Ritchie's death was largely overshadowed by the media coverage of the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, which occurred the week before.

Dennis Ritchie's name was not a household name at all, but.

Dennis Ritchie has been the author or contributor to about 50 academic papers, books and textbooks and which have had over 15,000 citations.